Steam and supercritical water gasification of densified canola meal fuel pellets

In this research, canola meal was densified using bio-additives including alkali lignin, glycerol, and l-proline. The fuel pellet's formulation was optimized. The best fuel pellet demonstrated relaxed density and mechanical durability of 1015 kg/m3 and 99.0%, respectively. Synchrotron-based computer tomography technique indicated that lack of water in pellet formulation resulted in a twofold increase in pellet porosity. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that ignition temperature (240 °C) and burn-out temperature (640 °C) for fuel pellet were smaller than those for coal. Impacts of process parameters were evaluated on the quality of the gas product obtained from pellet's steam gasification and hydrothermal gasification. The gasification experiments showed production of untreated syngas with a suitable range of H2/CO molar ratio (1.3–1.6) using steam gasification. Hydro-thermal gasification produced a larger molar ratio of H2/CO (1.8–51.2) for the gas product. Modeling of pellet's steam gasification showed an excellent agreement with experimental results of steam gasification.